Dérangement and the 2020 South Shore Lobster Dispute: A New Acadian History of Nationalism, Identity, and the Maritime Fisheries

• Main Author: Gaudet, Anna
• Format: Report
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Mi’kmaq
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10222/81590

Between September and November of 2020, Nova Scotians witnessed the most violent resource-based conflict in the province’s recent history. Following the launch of the Sipekne’katik Nation’s livelihood fishery on the Saint Mary’s Bay, many white settler fishers expressed militant and sometimes violent opposition, questioning the legality of the Mi’kmaq fishery and its potential impact on health of the Bay’s lucrative lobster stock. Waving flags of red, white, blue, and yellow to contrast with those of the Mi’kmaq fishers, Acadian fishers (a minority francophone group native to the region) identified themselves as a distinct stakeholder group during the conflict, a unique development within the context of Acadian history and past settler-Indigenous fisheries disputes in the region. To capture the nuance of this recent conflict, this study took an interdisciplinary approach. This thesis argues that the display of Acadian nationalism during the 2020 South Shore Lobster Dispute was motivated by the group’s own identity as a regional settler minority. More precisely, the study concludes that the increased agency of Indigenous fishers operating on the Acadian shore was perceived as a threat to not only Acadian hegemony in the Maritime fisheries, but overall Acadian livelihood and agency. To reach this conclusion, this thesis traced the persistent relevance of the Maritime fisheries to Acadian self-perception and cultural preservation. The Maritime fisheries are shown to have conclusively allowed the Acadians to increase their political and economic agency as well as preserve a national identity after their deportation and diaspora, providing a comprehensive account of how the fisheries shaped Acadian nationhood as it exists today. In turn, the study provides a new understanding of how nationalism and identity is related to the Acadian fisheries, the 1999 Burnt Church Conflict, the Acadian-Mi’kmaq relationship, and twenty-first century Acadian identity politics. The thesis also shows the value of exploring stakeholder self-perception to better understand how history, memory, identity, nationalism, and settler colonialism can drive group positionality and threat perception in resource conflicts, particularly those between settler and Indigenous groups.